Christmas and Epiphany

Composed mostly from lecture notes from the class on "Christmas and Epiphany - Test case for Liturgical Theology," by Father Alexander Schmemann, Fall semester 1971.

PART 1

The Feasts of Christmas and Epiphany introduced a change into the life of the Church. It brought about a change in the liturgical tradition, liturgical piety, and in the Church's relationship to the cultural world.

They were real changes because something appeared in the Church that did not exist before. The only feast celebrated in the early Church was the Feast of Pascha. Christmas and Epiphany and other feasts of Christ and the Theotokos were not celebrated separately from Pascha. The early Church was not of this world and was not concerned with the culture around it. The second coming of Christ was thought to be immanent. Therefor celebrations of anything other that Pascha were not necessary. But the Church eventually realized that the second coming of Christ was not immanent. Christ in the Gospels tells us that no one knows the time of His coming again. The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins makes this very clear. Eventually the Church had to confront the pagan world and its culture. The Church realized that it is impossible for the Church to exist out of this world. Christ came for the salvation of this world. If the Church is here for the salvation of this world, the changes introduced by these two feasts were necessary. The changes these feasts brought about in the Church allowed the Church to confront the pagan world in which it existed and to proclaim to that world the message of the Gospel.

To understand these Feasts one needs to understand the Feast of Pascha . In the Typikon, the book that gives directives on how to celebrate the liturgical services, names the Feast of the Nativity, Christmas, as follows: "Nativity in the Flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ - Pascha three day feast." The same wording appears for Epiphany. In other words these two Feasts are Pascal Feasts. Both have a "Holy Week," pre-feast, before the Feast whose themes are the same as those of the Holy Week before Pascha. A forty day fast precedes the Nativity of Christ. Christmas and Epiphany are duplications of Pascha because the Feast of the Church is the Feast of Pascha. In the early Church Feast equaled Pascha and Pascha equaled Feast.

So when these Feast were introduced into the Church they were grounded in Pascha. Without Pascha there is no feat, no Christmas, no Epiphany, and no other feast as well.

To understand what a feast is, according to Father Alexander, we need to rediscover the spiritual meaning of feast. For pagan man as well as for modern man a feast was a break, a break in time. Man gets a break from his normal time routine. He has a day off. That break comes to an end and man goes back to the time of his every day routine. In the Bible and in the Church a feast is not a break in time but a celebration that gives meaning to whole of time. It is not a break from it. In the Book of Genesis we encounter the first Feast, the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a Feast introduced God.. He rested from all His work, not because He was tired and needed a break and then continue with creation. He looked at what He made and saw it was good. He rested from that work of creation He completed. But He continues to "work" holding together and directing that creation He has made. God rejoices in all that He has made good. The Sabbath was a day of rejoicing. It was a feast because it was the crowning point of His creation. That day, the Sabbath, was a day in which man entered into communion with God. It is a day of rejoicing in with God for the creation He made good for man. It was a day of joy. The Sabbath Feast was a contact with this reality. Man rejoiced in that Sabbath Feast because it gave meaning to his life and all that he did including his work. That feast was needed to give meaning to man's work. The feast gave meaning to man's life and justification for his work as well.

Man lost this meaning of feast. Feasting became a day of fun and the fun ended when the day was over. But in Christ, in the Church, joy and feast again become central to our Christian life. This is what must be recovered if Christmas and Epiphany are to have meaning for us. And to recover this meaning we need to understand Pascha. Pascha, as are the feasts of the Nativity and Epiphany, is not merely a break in time in which we commemorate a historical event. Pascha, Passover, in the old Testament was a joy filled celebration of liberation from slavery. It was a passage into freedom from slavery. It was a resurrection and had taken on an apocalyptic meaning that pointed to the future, the time of the Messiah. All this has been fulfilled in Christ. To the early Christian Christ's death and resurrection was the fulfillment of Passover. Christ has become our Passover, our Pascha, from slavery to freedom, from death to life. The early Christian rejoiced in this and Sunday after Sunday was a celebration of Pascha. They lived from Sunday to Sunday, from Pascha to Pascha. For the early Christian Pascha was the beginning of the new year, the beginning of new time, the time of the Kingdom yet to come but already here in our midst in the Church. This is the joy not only of Pascha that comes in the spring but the joy of every Pascal celebration Sunday after Sunday. Living in and partaking of this new time applies to all aspects of the time we live in this world. We might even add that we as Orthodox Christians are to live from Sunday to Sunday and that the time between these Sundays is sanctified and transformed by what we do in the Lord's Day Liturgical Services.

The Pascal Liturgy emphasizes the joy of the Lord we enter into and live. At Resurrection Matins we sing:

T'is the day or Resurrection, let us be illumined, O people. Pascha, the Lord's Pascha! From death to life, and from earth to heaven, Christ our God, has lead us who sing the song of victory. Christ is risen from the dead!

Let the heavens rejoice in a worthy manner, and let the earth be glad; let all the visible and invisible universe celebrate for Christ our eternal joy has risen.

Come on this glorious day of Resurrection and partake of the fruit of the new vine, the divine joy of Christ's Kingdom.

In Liturgy we encounter and celebrate the joy of Pascha. Because Christ is risen so are we and we now belong to Him and to the new time of the redeemed and transformed creation. We apply this joy to our lives and to the time we live here in this world. This is the meaning of feasting. We live already in this new time in Christ, in the Church, and just a Christ has transformed everything including time, we also apply this transformation, this joy, to the time we live here in this world.

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